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The Tiki-Z Is What Happens When The Best Desktop Gaming PC Gets A Massive GPU Upgrade

15 months ago I wrote a review hailing Falcon Northwest’s Tiki as the perfect PC. I arrived at that confident conclusion simply because it doesn’t have a weakness. It also boasted the most performance per cubic inch of any desktop on the market, and that was when it “only” packed an NvidiaNvidia GTX TitanTitan and an IntelIntel Core i7-3770K. Naturally, when I learned that the engineering wizards at Falcon Northwest squeezed Nvidia’s 12GB dual GPU Titan Z into the same chassis, and planned to give away an ASUS 4K monitor alongside it, I had to investigate.

If you haven’t caught my frequent love notes to the Tiki on my Twitter feed, I’ll bring you up to speed. It’s a micro-tower measuring 4-inches wide and 13-inches tall — roughly the size of Microsoft'sMicrosoft's original Xbox, but actually attractive. Falcon Northwest is quick to remind people that they don’t merely assemble PCs, but rather they design systems. To that end, founder Kelt Reeves blew through multiple prototypes and literally stacks of hardware perfecting it. He ignored his CAD software when it basically told him “this design is impossible.” And he convinced ASUS engineers that an enthusiast market did exist for the mini-ITX form factor, which led to their P8Z77-I Deluxe motherboard, and ultimately a path for the Tiki to come to market in 2012.

Falcon Northwest Tiki-Z

Without dwelling too much on the past, the hard work paid off, and I’d argue that you won’t find any reviews of the Tiki containing anything less than effusive praise. If what you’ve read to this point sounds like an overhyped press release, that’s because the Tiki is the only PC brand I’ve reviewed where I turned around and enthusiastically bought one.

Today, Falcon Northwest is launching the Tiki-Z, an evolution of the original system that incorporates Nvidia’s GTX Titan-Z graphics card (12GB of 7Gbps GDDR 5 memory) and a liquid-cooled Intel Core i7-4790K Devil’s Canyon CPU. It’s a considerable upgrade; one that again found Reeves reaching out to component suppliers for unique solutions. Silverstone answered that call with a modified version of their tiny 600W power supply, which can now handle the energy requirements of an overclocked Devil’s Canyon CPU, three hard drives, and the monster Titan-Z.

They’ve also added a customizable (green glass sporting the Nvidia logo, or smoke-tinted acrylic without branding) case window with lighting, which not only shows off the graphics hardware inside but doubles as a custom air intake to feed that Titan-Z cool air precisely at its hottest point.

“Tiki-Z gives our customers the dual GPU option they’ve wanted since Tiki was first released.” said Reeves. “They can now play truly demanding 3D games at 4K resolution in a slim PC that can easily fit on anyone’s desk. Tiki-Z takes our power-per-cubic-inch mission to an entirely new level.”

The Tiki-Z now sports a side window, customizable with green glass or smoke-tinted acrylic.

I have a Tiki-Z system in for review, and will be testing it extensively at both 4K and 1440p resolutions. What I can say early on is that while the Titan-Z may not be the most affordable graphics card, it makes perfect sense inside such a compact system. It’s sitting on my desk with my monitor towering over it, and has more than enough horsepower to comfortably crank out gaming eyecandy at 4K. Doing that without some monolith tower heating up my office is appealing to me. I’m looking forward to delivering my full evaluation.

Speaking of monitors, Falcon Northwest is bundling the ASUS PB287Q 28-inch 4K monitor at no extra charge. It has a surprisingly good TN panel and sports a 60Hz@4K refresh rate and 1ms response time. It’s one of the better 4K monitors on the market.

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